Denico Autry routinely broke into the athletic facility at East Mississippi Community College, scaling a 14-foot wall and disabling the security camera.
You might recall the school’s name from the popular Netflix series “Last Chance U,” featuring a junior college football powerhouse in Scooba, Mississippi where players flock for a “last chance” to earn a Division I scholarship.
Autry enrolled right out of small Albemarle High School, located an hour northeast of Charlotte, North Carolina. East Mississippi is surrounded by nothing. Autry and friends just wanted a respite from the boredom.
“Denico and all his buddies would break into our building so that they could shoot basketball,” said Buddy Stephens, head coach at EMCC and star of the Netflix show. “So nobody would know who was breaking in and playing basketball, he would climb a 14-foot wall and unhook the camera so that nobody could see. They would climb down, play basketball for two hours.
“He would climb back up, hook the camera back up and shimmy back down the other side. And guess what? He would climb it like he was Spiderman.”
“They would lock everything up and we’d kinda be stuck in the rooms,” Autry said Wednesday with a smile. “But some of the guys, we used to get out and have fun.”
Autry stood 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds then. Watching him climb that wall left no doubt he was an athlete. That Spiderman-like tendency lent itself to the gridiron at EMCC, where he first relied on raw athletic ability to fit in. Over time, he learned how to be a football player – not just an athlete – and asserted himself as a defensive force on the Lions’ first national championship team in 2011.
That earned him a scholarship to Mississippi State, then a shot in the NFL, which has turned into much more in his fourth season with the Raiders. All the while he’s possessed a tendency to fool those who don’t know him, his soft-spoken nature off the field masking a ferocity on it. He’s not fooling anyone these days, the last several games proving that his evolution from mischievous, untapped teenager to polished NFL defensive lineman is complete.
“Things take time,” said Raiders’ defensive line coach Jethro Franklin, who recruited Autry out of EMCC when he coached at the University of Miami. “Now some of the fruits of his labor are starting to just pay off, so it’s nice to see.”
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William Jones was stunned the first time he shook Autry’s hand. Jones recruited Autry to EMCC, first meeting the high-schooler in North Carolina after a nine-hour drive from Mississippi at the recommendation of a friend in coaching.
“He’s got the biggest hand you’ve ever seen,” Jones said. “Little finger all the way to his thumb is 13 inches. He’s got big old knuckles. His arms hung way down. Broad shoulders and long arms, but when he shook my hand he had big ol’ strong hands and long fingers.
“You knew that he would develop.”
Autry’s high school coach played him at defensive end. He didn’t line up with his rear to the end zone, though, rather his back facing the sideline. Autry called the position “rush end,” which the EMCC staff quickly disposed of once he arrived in Scooba.
From a technique standpoint, the transition between stances took time. Not only did Autry need adjusting to life in nowhere, U.S.A., the speed of junior college football and the strength of opponents, he first had to learn how to line up.
“It kinda was (tough to change stances) because it’s all I ever knew,” Autry said. “Then they scraped me up and I kinda caught on pretty quick.”
Autry played for Buddy Stephens in 2010 and 2011. (Courtesy of EMCC)
En route to the 2011 national title, Autry and current Ravens linebacker Za’Darius Smith gave quarterbacks hell lining up on opposite sides of the defensive line. Once Autry put all the pieces together that season, coaches knew he could play Division I.
A turning point in Autry’s development, Jones thinks, was during the championship game. As Arizona Western threatened a comeback with around three minutes left in the fourth quarter, Autry asked to be taken out. EMCC was on the brink of its first-ever title, and he was gassed.
“I waved him back in,” Jones said, “I said, ‘Bull****, this is for everything. Great players don’t get tired right now. Great players don’t come out this time of the game. You stay in and you find a way.’
“Then he made a sack.”
Off the field, Autry tested himself in other ways. Asked about the times he hot-wired his head coach’s golf cart to grab food at the Chevron mini mart three miles from campus, Autry couldn’t hold in his laughter. If Stephens left his keys in the ignition, the “theft” only became easier. Stephens said that was the only “problem” Autry caused in his two years on campus.
Then there were boxing matches players engaged in, helmets and mouthguards and gloves included. Jones recalls one fight where Autry walked into his stance, threw one straight left hand and his opponent hit the floor.
“He was 7-0, what we counted,” Jones said.
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Despite an occasional flair for the dramatic off the field, Autry wasn’t made for the ra-ra lifestyle. A country boy from North Carolina at heart, he chose Mississippi State over USC, Miami and others because he didn’t want a big city despite the exposure it would bring. Even so, he headed into the SEC as a projected starter, a far cry from the player who arrived in Scooba fresh out of Albemarle.
“He had not been pushed, or had the need to be pushed,” Stephens said. “He didn’t know his limits and he didn’t know how good he could actually be. When he first got here, he wasn’t necessarily the finely polished athlete you see today.
“To watch him grow as a young man, and grow as a football player, was just phenomenal.”
Franklin, then the defensive line coach with the Hurricanes, missed out on Autry. As a parting promise of sorts, he told Autry he’d coach him one day.
Autry started 23 games over two seasons for Mississippi State, recording 73 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, six sacks and three forced fumbles. That wasn’t good enough to get drafted, but he signed with the Raiders as an undrafted free agent in 2014 and has been with the team since.
Autry sacks Giants quarterback Geno Smith in the fourth quarter last Sunday. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
After starting 15 games combined in 2015 and 2016, Autry hasn’t started once this season. Yet through 12 games, he’s playing arguably the best football of his career. In the last two weeks, Autry has three sacks, all coming on third down. He ranks fifth among all defensive ends this season with five passes deflected. You can thank those gargantuan hands for that.
“He has a tremendous knack. He has tremendous timing,” Franklin said. “If he’s not getting there, he has enough vision and awareness to get in that throwing lane and bat that ball down.”
One Autry sack of Denver quarterback Paxton Lynch two weeks ago left Raiders defensive play-caller John Pagano with few words. “Had one sack that was…can’t coach,” Pagano said. “It was straight man.” Multiple coaches used the word “rugged” to describe Autry. That originated in the small town of Albemarle, among the tumbleweeds of Scooba.
Every player undergoes transformations and evolutions, but not many head to the middle of nowhere with an unpolished skillset, a technique that nobody uses and everything left to prove. The Autry wreaking havoc in the AFC West now is a country mile from the one scaling walls and searching for himself, on and off the field, at Eastern Mississippi.
He’s fully evolved and, even more importantly for the Raiders, playing his best when they need it most.
“It’s getting to crunch time, man,” Autry said. “Have to rise to the occasion.”